


Beneath The Surface

by Tashlen



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Guilt, Jedi, Jedi Code, Jedi Knights, Male-Female Friendship, Mind Games, Mind Manipulation, Multi, Past Mind Control, Philosophy, Psychological Trauma, References to the Jedi Council, Regret, Shame, Sith Pureblood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 10:10:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12408393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tashlen/pseuds/Tashlen
Summary: Coming to terms with the reality of a Jedi Knight's past, changes her present and future.





	Beneath The Surface

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot promise any particular update schedule - it'll happen when it happens. ;)

The ship was very quiet, bereft of the usual sounds of a busy, diverse crew while they slept in their berths. This was the time of day that Lord Scourge liked best, and was the only one in which he routinely wandered the ship’s open areas. The crew had accepted his presence at the behest of their Jedi Knight, but they did not seek his company, nor did he find himself often inclined to seek theirs.

For him, there was only her.

Not in a romantic sense; he was incapable of such feelings and emotions, and he did not trouble himself to consider if that lack bothered him after so many years. However, she was a beautifully complicated puzzle to him, and he had always hated to be unable to categorize something clearly in his mind. When he had first seen her face in a vision, he had not fully understood the impact that she would have on his life and long existence.

Once they had met, he had found himself intrigued by her convictions, her determination, and her strength. When the Emperor had claimed her, he had watched her suffer endlessly in silence, isolated and awash in misery and pain. She had been under the Emperor’s control, and he’d thought that she would find that fact a balm when he had helped her break free and escape.

But the knowledge that her cruelties to others had been forced upon her against her will had not eased her guilt or shame in the least. Scourge knew that her serenity was a mask that she wore to convince everyone around her that she had recovered, and she wore it very convincingly. It did not fool him, however. He could see her pain, feel it trailing behind her like a cloak that she could never quite remove. The shadow of the past clung to her, and ate at her belief in herself and in her purpose as a Jedi.

He realized that he should have seen it as a fault line in her Jedi beliefs. Something to exploit. A way to make her see that his path was the one that she should follow in order to find relief from her regret. But instead, he found himself wishing that he knew how to remove the burden from her shoulders. She had been damaged by the Emperor’s toxic presence in her mind, and he could see the wounds behind her eyes when she looked at him. If he had been anyone else, perhaps he would have known what to do, or how to help her. But he was powerless to do anything but watch her sink further and further inside her own privately tortured thoughts.

Something made him stop near her room; a whisper of sound, a tendril of noise. He couldn’t begin to say what it was, or why he didn’t just move away a moment later and leave her to her privacy. Instead, he found himself coming closer to the door, with her fractured, shattered grief calling to him from behind the solid barrier. One hand touched the door, palm flat against it, and Scourge glanced at the panel, unsure if he should intrude upon her solitude. She would likely not welcome his presence, he reasoned, starting to back away, but as his hand left the door, it slid open quietly.

“I did not intend to disturb you,” he said carefully, as she stepped into view on bare feet. “I could go, if you would prefer to be alone.” 

The familiar robes were absent; it was late, and no doubt she had not thought to see anyone until shifts resumed in a few hours. In their place, she wore a worn pair of ivory sleep pants, with a loose shirt that bore the faded image of a Hoth shipping company’s logo. Chestnut hair, usually carefully contained into a braid or a tightly wound bun, spilled down around her shoulders, framing her angular face and softening the sharp lines and edges of jaw and cheekbones in the golden light emanating from her chamber. Her clear green eyes were shadowed, and he could see the lingering poison of the Emperor’s influence lying spilled behind them, its fetid infection causing a deepening rift inside her that only he and Kira seemed to be able to see.

Her silence felt greedily anticipatory – it was simply waiting for her to find the correct words, words that would send him away. Words that would allow her to sit alone in her chamber, and hate herself for the atrocities she had been forced to commit. And as the moment stretched out from one, into two, Lord Scourge finally made himself start to turn away from her wounded, grieving eyes and the austere room beyond her that he had only caught glimpses of in passing.

He took a single heavy step, and then he heard her speak, forcing the words out in a stammering rush as if she were choking on them.

“Please… don’t leave.”


End file.
